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Sorry, but unless Smokey from “Friday” has taken over the head post of the California NAACP, there is no way the organization should confuse civil rights with legalizing marijuana.

All that is wrong with Black America’s current leadership today can be summarized in one way or another with the NAACP’s support of legalizing marijuana in California.

Using the extremely weak argument that because drug offenses targets young Black men at such a disproportionate rate, the only means to correct this unfortunate trend is to legalize pot in an effort to decriminalize possession and, thus stem back the flow of Black males headed to jails.

Really?

Has it come to this for the California chapter of the NAACP? I thought that the NAACP was an organization that sought for justice for all people, particularly “colored people” that faced discrimination in their pursuit of better, safer lives as equal Americans.

And now that legacy is thrown into the wind as one of the largest state chapters puts its energy behind the effort to legalize a drug that has come to symbolize a nonchalant attitude among our youth towards the community’s internal  disintegration that is leaving the youth has the first generation in America not to improve about their parents’ accomplishments.

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There once was a time when the NAACP fought against injustice that Black folks faced in America. Now, it seems as though the organization uses the legacy that was built from the intelligence and sacrifices of proud men and women of the past in order to battle against perceived slights against Black people in America. Granted, increased jail sentences for 15-year-olds selling nickel bags on the street versus the probationary sentences given for powder cocaine does reek of injustice, but the proper course of action is not to approve of the dysfunction behavior – it is to correct the injustice while modifying the dysfunction.

And, much like what we have chosen to do within Black America for the past 15-20 years, the NAACP has decided to address the issue of illegal drugs such as marijuana ravishing our communities by attacking the legality of drugs (namely, marijuana) instead of addressing the civil rights issues entailed at the rudimentary levels. 

For example, the strategy for the NAACP should have been addressing why there are higher levels of usage, sales, and distribution within the Black communities of California, noting that funding for law enforcement while it is illegal must be directed towards schools, employment opportunities, and community strengthening efforts if marijuana is made legal in the Golden State. Regardless of how the “…burden (of marijuana arrests) has fallen disproportionately on people of color and young Black men…”, approving of corruption within the Black community as the strategy to change the disproportionate levels of criminality within Black America by changing the laws violates the spirit of the NAACP and the legacy of its mission. By making the abnormal and corruptible acceptable, we are providing further bridges to our own self-destruction, not to mention we corrode the dwindling moral authority leadership within Black America with asinine decisions as to acquiesce to accepting the recreational drug use that has helped to destroy our families since the 1960s.

 

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Yet, the bigger problem with this situation is not that the NAACP is supporting the legalization of marijuana in California. It is that much of the Black leadership paradigm in place today continues to chase down the wrong issues in today’s political and social climates, thus